CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Faith in the Cavaliers as a playoff team is a leap on Andrew Bynum's delicate knees.

For the Browns, playoff hopes are attached to the small miracle of Brandon Weeden looking more like a young Philip Rivers under offensive coordinator Norv Turner's quarterback wand.

So if you like to get a handle on the unofficial odds in a casino city with no sports action, the Indians not only have the next chance to go to the playoffs, they have the best chance.

"We're right in the thick of things," center fielder Michael Bourn said recently. "(The Tigers) know we're right behind them."

The Indians aren't flying under the Tigers' radar, true enough. The Tigers also aren't losing sleep.

The snag in an otherwise promising first half was the Tigers' impersonation of King Kong swatting airplanes whenever the Indians occupied their space.

Head-to-head matchups between the two happen just twice more and not at all in September. The schedule is fairly friendly for both AL Central contenders, more than dotted with the softest opponents baseball has to offer.

If the Indians have been under the radar at all, it's in their own city. The attendance is a mirror of 2012 when the Indians' record at the All-Star break was 44-41 with a roster offering more prayer than hope. The ranking (27th) is slightly higher than a year ago.

Those Indians went 24-53 in the second half. If that happens again, you have my permission to spend August obsessing over the accuracy of the Browns' backup long snapper (not that you won't anyway.)

The popular take in this town every summer since the 1990s is that the Indians must capture the attention of the city before Browns' training camp starts. The only thing more pathetic than that theory is if it's actually true for some people.

As if keeping track of Weeden's batted passes in the preseason is a full-time job that can suffer no distractions. As if everything else will stop mattering while Barkevious Mingo tries to master a second pass rush move.

There's ample reason to believe the Indians will contend through the summer, especially if they make the necessary moves in the bullpen at the trade deadline.

They have arrived at the All-Star break pretty much as projected, a better than .500 team with more depth than a year ago and with the ability to manufacture runs.

The surprise is they've done it with a shaky bullpen, a relatively solid rotation and with two promising sources of power -- Mark Reynolds and Nick Swisher -- suffering a brown out.

What matters most every July is where the Indians are as a team and as an organization at the trade deadline. They're in a pretty good place at 51-44 and having won seven of the their past nine series. The 51 wins at the break is the highest since 52 in 2007 when they last made the playoffs.

Organizationally, they don't have the surplus of great position player prospects -- especially major-league-ready prospects -- required to justify trading for a top-of-the-rotation starter such as the Cubs' Matt Garza.

If they were a surer thing -- leading the Tigers by a half dozen games -- and they could compensate for the loss of Francisco Lindor or Danny Salazar in a deal -- the temptation would be much greater. No way Garza makes sense as a 10-start rental. Barring a starting pitcher the Indians can control for a year or two beyond 2013, the best move would be to bolster a bullpen that's sagging.

The rotation coming out of the All-Star break is Scott Kazmir, Corey Kluber, Justin Mazsterson, Ubaldo Jimnenez and TBD. OK, so you feel better about TBD than you do Jimenez? Salazar and Zach McAllister could make up the deficiency.

Whatever they do, the Indians can't match the Detroit rotation or the top five hitters in the Tigers' lineup, but they can overmatch a shaky Detroit bullpen with the proper moves.

And that wouldn't require giving up the future at shortstop or interrupt Salazar's promising impression of Jaret Wright in 1997.

The Indians showed enough in the first half to suggest they'll contend into September. And if that doesn't sound like the highest praise or most exciting prediction, it's the best we got.

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